


Apple-Seed and Apple-Thorn

by BreTheWriter



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Harry Lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 06:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3840880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreTheWriter/pseuds/BreTheWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It ought to have been a more or less routine Kingsman mission...and in a way, it is: take out a couple bad guys, rescue a hostage, leave before reinforcements arrive. But the hostage is the last person Eggsy expected it to be--someone he never expected to see again. They both have a chance to try again, to say everything they meant to say but never could quite find the proper time and place for...but the world is different than it was when last they met, and so are they.</p>
<p>Maybe that's all to the good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neroh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neroh/gifts).



> This is entirely Sarah's fault and you may place the blame squarely on her. She's the one who even got me to _see_ this damn movie, let alone write fic about it.

“I’m in position, Eggsy.” Roxy’s whisper came over the small receiver twisted into Eggsy’s ear. “Where are you?”

“Give me a minute,” Eggsy whispered back, pausing in his progress to give his full attention to the conversation. “Bit of fallen rubbish here. Have to move careful, like.”

“Copy that.”

Eggsy crawled forward again, moving gingerly over the loose bits of masonry to keep from disturbing them and making noise. Sound had a way of traveling in inconvenient ways, and the last thing he wanted was to ruin the whole operation because someone heard movement in what ought to have been solid rock.

Sometimes Eggsy couldn’t believe it had actually been six months—six months since he’d got the chance he thought he’d blown, six months since he’d become a man to be proud of, six months since he’d helped save the world. He’d become very, very good at it—Arthur, the new Arthur who’d ascended to “kingship” the same day Eggsy had been “knighted,” had told him that more than a few times, and more importantly, so had Merlin—and that wasn’t something that had happened in a few weeks, but still, sometimes it didn’t seem like it had been that long.

Other times, though, it was hard to believe it had  _only_ been six months.

“Right,” he muttered at last, reaching a solid rock wall with a rough gap partway up it and pushing himself to a kneeling position. “I’m here. Merlin, you there?”

“I’m here,” Merlin’s voice confirmed. He wasn’t whispering, but then, why should he be?  _He_ was back at base, the lucky bastard, sitting behind his computer and running whatever searches were deemed necessary. Not that Eggsy grudged him that, he was actually damn happy the man was there. He only needed to look at the still-fresh scar under his left armpit to remind himself that sometimes, the only reason he came home from a mission was because Merlin was watching from a safe distance, free of the distraction of imminent peril.

“Roxy, you taken a look yet?” Eggsy asked.

He could envision the female Kingsman shaking her head. “I was waiting for you. On three?”

“You count.”

“One…two… _three._ ”

Eggsy rose from his knees to a crouching position, just high enough that he could see over the edge of the hole without, hopefully, being seen. The first thing he did was locate the corresponding hole on the other side. He could just make out the shape of Roxy’s face, her hair scraped back from her face in a ponytail, her thick black glasses perched on the end of her nose. Both gaps were just about big enough for a body to get through, located near the ceiling of the stone chamber, and probably served to pipe air in from the outside, keep it circulating. Eggsy didn’t know and he didn’t care, so long as they also provided entrance and egress. He gave Roxy a brief nod, which she returned, then looked down at the chamber.

It was hardly a large room, perhaps four meters on either side and three meters high, cut from the surrounding stone, with a heavy steel door. The only light in the room was mounted just above the door, casting a powerful beam across the floor, which was all to the good as it left the upper third of the room in relative darkness, further hiding them from view. Standing with his back to the door was a swarthy, dark-haired man in a neat, dark uniform. Two more men who seemed cut from the same cloth stood on either side of him; a fourth stood opposite them, a bit closer to Roxy’s hiding place than Eggsy’s. This man was enormous and muscular, his arms folded menacingly across his chest.

In between the muscular man and the smaller, uniformed trio was a chair, at first glance a standard construction of metal, with a solid back held up by two thick posts, a flat seat, two arms, and four legs joined together at the bottom by a pair of runners. Eggsy focused on the runners, however, and spotted the fat black bolts, two set in each runner. The chair was bolted to the ground, so that anyone who was sitting in it would be unable to stand up and use the chair as a weapon if tied to it.

Which the man in it was. From the angle where he stood, Eggsy couldn’t see anything but a mop of brown hair and a cheap muslin shirt, the man’s face being obscured. His arms were bound firmly to the arms of the chair, his ankles to the legs, and there was even a binding around his torso, strapping him to the back of the chair. These bastards had thought of just about everything, damn the luck.

It wasn’t safe to look much longer. Eggsy turned and slid down the wall to a sitting position. “You get all that, Merlin?” he whispered.

“That must be our boy,” Merlin replied.

Three days before, Kingsman had received the information that one of their enemies, a Russian organization thought extinct after the breakup of the Soviet Union, had resurfaced…so to speak. Actually, this particular hideout was buried under several tons of rock. What they were up to, none of them could guess…but the report was that they had a hostage. Under the principal that  _the enemy of my enemy is my friend,_ it had been decided to send in an extraction team. And since Roxy and Eggsy had both a proven track record of working well together and an uncanny ability to get into places they weren’t wanted, they had been selected for the mission.

“Two to one. Think we can do it?” Roxy asked.

Eggsy scoffed. “You could take ‘em all out yourself, Rox.”

Roxy laughed softly. “I’d rather have your help. Get it done faster.”

Before Eggsy could respond, a voice began speaking from below, the Russian words coming through clearly despite the echoes from the stone. A frown puckered the young man’s brow as he listened. “He’s only just starting to interrogate him now?”

“Your translator kicked in already?” Merlin sounded surprised.

“We have translators?”

“You know—” Roxy’s voice started to rise briefly before she checked, then repeated in a whisper, “You know Russian?”

“Little bit,” Eggsy said. “Shh…”

His glasses flickered just then, and the English translations of the Russian words being spoken crawled before his eyes. The man was still speaking. “We have cared for you all this time, fed you, tended your wounds. Surely you would like to repay us for this.”

“I never asked you to do that.” The response, which obviously came from the hostage, was low and rasping, but perfectly clear. Whoever he was, he was either a native Russian speaker or someone who had studied the language extensively.

“You would have preferred us to let you die?” the first man said, sounding mildly amused.

“Why not? You’re going to kill me anyway,” the hostage said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact.

“But why would we kill you? Because you won’t tell us what we wish to know? Oh, but you will. I guarantee it. If speaking as reasonable gentlemen is not enough to persuade you, we will move on to more…forceful measures. And eventually, we will find the point of pain where you will break, where you will tell us what we wish to know.”

“That point will be extremely difficult to find. In fact, I dare say it may be impossible. You have no idea what my limits are, what I’ve been trained to withstand.”

“I enjoy a good challenge. Sooner or later, my friend, you  _will_ tell us. After all, what have your friends done for you? Left you to our tender mercies, all this time. The fact that we haven’t hurt you—yet—well, that means nothing. They had no way of knowing that. And yet they never looked for you. Do they really deserve you to keep this silence?” The man made his voice sound almost reasonable. A weak man might have broken under the plea.

The hostage was having none of that. “Yes,” he practically spat. “Of course. I tell you again, you will get nothing from me.”

“And  _I_ tell  _you_ , we will have you begging for mercy before long. Sergei is extremely skilled at what he does, do you know that? He knows exactly how to skin a man without killing him. I’m told it is quite painful. Are you certain you won’t just tell us what we want to know, and save us all the trouble?”

“I’ll die before I let you hurt him.”

Eggsy blinked. At first he thought he had misunderstood the last word—but no, the word  _him_ was displayed on his glasses. He’d honestly started to believe this man was a professional, but he’d just made a glaringly amateurish mistake…unless it was part of some clever plot, but that didn’t seem likely.

“Him?”

The word was spoken softly, silkily, and Eggsy could hear the malicious smile in the man’s voice. No surprise that he’d picked up on the mistake. These men were obviously pros, certainly not men to let an advantage, any possible advantage, slip by them. And this was a big advantage.

When the hostage spoke again, he sounded shaken for the first time. “I—I meant them, of course. It’s been a while since I spoke Russian, and—”

“Oh, no, don’t try to cover it up,” the first man interrupted, still speaking in the same soft, cruel voice. “We both know the truth. There is one who means more to you than the others, is there not?”

“I told you, I misspoke,” the hostage repeated, but Eggsy could tell the damage was done.

“Roxy, we’ve got to hurry,” he whispered hastily. “On my signal. My left means go for it, my right means wait.”

“Copy that,” Roxy whispered back.

Eggsy brought his head back up over the edge, then looked down over the edge. The man directly in front of the hostage had stepped close, bending down to bring his face as near to his powerless victim as possible.

“Tell me where to find the others, and I will spare him for you,” he practically whispered.

This had gone on long enough. Eggsy was about to lift his left hand when he happened to glance at the muscular man again. What he saw made him frantically adjust his glasses with his right hand, then drop back out of sight.

“Shit,” he hissed. “Almost missed it.”

“What is it, Eggsy?” Roxy asked anxiously.

“Take a look at the muscled bloke be’ind the ‘ostage.” Eggsy could control his working-class accent when he chose to, but in moments of extreme emotion or stress, it tended to come to the forefront. “Careful-like.”

There was a brief pause, and then Roxy’s voice came over the line again. “He’s holding something in his hand—it’s just visible above his arm, but I can’t quite make out what it is. A gun?”

“Worse. Dead-man switch.”

“A what?”

Eggsy rubbed his forehead briefly, his mind racing furiously even as he forced himself to calm down and explain, “He’s got a tube sort of thing in his hand, with a button on top, thumb pressing down. If he lets go, whole place is gonna blow. Blast doesn’t kill us, falling rocks will.”

“In other words, we can’t kill him because he’d automatically let go of the button,” Roxy said. “And if we attack—”

“He’ll let go of the button deliberately,” Merlin completed. “You would have to drop him and grab the button quickly, but you’d only have seconds to act, if that. Your best option would be to hold his thumb down on the button  _while_ taking him out, but obviously that’s not going to happen.”

Something clicked in Eggsy’s brain. He couldn’t help the slight smile that crossed his face. “Hey, Roxy. Remember the accident on the firing range?”

“What accident on the firing range?” Merlin asked sharply.

Roxy, however, was obviously grinning by her tone of voice. “You’re a genius.”

“Want to take the shot?”

“You’d better, you’ve got a better angle. Got the stuff?”

Eggsy slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his suit. “Right here.”

“I wish you two would tell me what you’re up to,” Merlin complained.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Eggsy couldn’t help but grin. He liked and respected Merlin as he did precious few other people—but he did love taking the piss out of him from time to time. “Your signal this time, Roxy.”

“Right,” Roxy replied. “My left for go, my right for stop. One…two…three.”

Eggsy rose to a crouching position again, this time with a small object held between his hands—a metal gun, bit like a hot-glue gun with a needle-thin tip, a glass vial filled with something blue and faintly glowing inserted into the chamber. He took careful aim, moving slowly so as not to attract attention, but he probably needn’t have bothered. All four of the Russians, including the muscle man, were staring at the hostage like an ambush of tigers surrounding a monkey. The leader was grinning broadly.

“You really ought to tell us, you know,” he said, almost pleasantly. “Because if you don’t help us, we  _will_ still find them. And when we find them, and we find out which one is  _him,_ I’m afraid it will be he who pays for your insolence.” He leaned closer. “I told you that Sergei is very, very good at what he does. Can you imagine the sorts of things I could ask him to do to your little favorite? Ah, but you won’t have to imagine for long. I’ll take mercy on you. You won’t have to imagine what he’ll go through. I’ll allow you to watch—”

Eggsy’s eyes flickered up to Roxy. She caught his eye, then seized the left stem of her glasses and jerked them firmly up her nose.

Eggsy squeezed the trigger.

The muscular man yelped as the blue bolt hit square in the back of his hand. The other three looked up in mingled alarm and anger, yelling in Russian. Eggsy and Roxy didn’t hesitate. The minute the hand holding the dead-man switch was immobilized, both of them were on the move, leaping through the holes and into the room. Roxy dropped straight down, landed on her feet, bent her knees to absorb the impact, and used the momentum to launch herself at the muscle man. A single swing of her weapon and the man was down, stunned by a blow to the temple; she caught his hand as it passed her, pressing down on the button before his hand thawed.

Eggsy, however, pushed himself slightly outward, twisted in midair, and planted both his feet firmly on the chest of the henchman nearest to himself. The man went down with a satisfying  _crunch_ as several bones fractured, possibly broke entirely, and his head hit the floor with a wet smack like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. Eggsy dropped low to avoid a swinging punch from the leader, then made a fast sweep with his leg, kicking the man’s feet out from under him and sending him to the floor. Eggsy drove his elbow into the man’s solar plexus, then looked up in time to see the third man.

Who had a gun.

_Fuck._

Thinking fast, Eggsy rolled to one side as the man fired where he’d been a split-second before, missing his friend by a hair. He braced his hands against the floor, clicked his heels together sharply, and pushed himself into a roundoff. As he turned, he hit the man in the forehead with his first foot, snapping his head back, then drove the blade sticking out of the heel of his other shoe into the man’s eye. The man fell screaming to the floor, slowly turning green, as Eggsy stuck the landing.

“Was that really necessary?” Roxy asked, pulling a face.

“Was aiming for his neck,” Eggsy grunted, pushing the blade against the stone floor until it clicked back into its sheath. “Didn’t realize he was so short.”

He knelt down in front of the man in the chair and tossed up a cocky grin. “Hi. We’re here to rescue you. This might hurt a bit.” Reaching into the same inner pocket where he’d concealed the little blue gun, he withdrew a keenly sharp switchblade. With two swift slices, he severed the bindings on the man’s arms.

The man hissed sharply, which Eggsy had expected; he’d probably suffered a loss of circulation to his hands, and the blood returning would hurt. He was about to help with the man’s feet when Roxy said urgently, “This fellow’s waking up—I can’t hold him down forever!”

Eggsy bit back a curse. He pressed the hilt of the knife into the man’s hand. “Here, cut the rest free,” he said, scrambling off to one side. “Be with you in a tick.”

Sure enough, the hired muscle was beginning to come round; he must have a skull thick as concrete and astonishing powers of recovery. Eggsy didn’t waste breath or energy in attempting to stun him a second time. Since Roxy still had a grip on his hand—and subsequently the button—Eggsy pulled out a small pistol and fired its single shot directly between the man’s eyes.

“Full marks for efficiency,” Roxy said dryly.

Eggsy ripped back the man’s shirt, exposing a thick belt of wires and explosives. He tapped the side of his glasses. “Merlin, a little help here?”

A grid rippled over the lenses of Eggsy’s glasses. After a moment, Merlin spoke calmly. “Cutting the wires from the detonator will only cause the detonation, the way this thing is rigged. And if you touch it the wrong way, it’ll blow. You’ll need to be cautious, lad.”

“A little more helpful help, please?” Eggsy rolled his eyes for Roxy’s benefit. She suppressed a smile at their typical banter.

“The blue wire coming out of the top of the third charge left of center,” Merlin said. “Pull it out as carefully as you can.”

Eggsy located the wire in question and was just reaching for it when he heard a shout from behind him. “ _Look out!”_

Instinctively, Eggsy twisted sideways so that he was half-shielding Roxy, both of them looking up involuntarily. The man who had been held hostage had leapt to his feet and inserted himself between Eggsy and the leader of the group, who had risen to his feet, his friend’s gun in his hand. Evidently the former hostage had been just in time to prevent Eggsy being struck on the back of the head, because he fell to the ground, blood pouring from a fresh wound at his temple.

No time to think, no time to hesitate. Eggsy rolled forward onto his feet and bulled upwards, butting the man under the chin with his head. The man’s head jerked back, and Eggsy grabbed his gun arm and pulled it down sharply over his knee. The loud  _snap_ as his arm fractured was momentarily overshadowed by the man’s scream, and then Eggsy caught the gun as it fell and fired three shots in rapid succession, effectively silencing him.

Tossing the gun aside and ignoring the body as it hit the floor, Eggsy turned back to the detonator belt as he dropped to his knees again. “Third left of center, was it?”

“Good boy.” Merlin’s murmur was just audible.

Eggsy’s fingers closed around the wire. He bit his lip, concentrating as hard as he could, and tugged gently but firmly. After a few moments, it came free. “Right. Now what?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that was it?”

“No.”

“Good. Green wire on the right, just above the hip. Cut it. Do  _not_ pull it loose.”

That was a bit harder than pulling it loose, but Roxy had a pair of wire snips in her own inner pocket. Eggsy held his breath until he felt the snips close and the two ends of the wire sprung free.

“Well done,” Merlin’s voice said. “That ought to do it. Get the hostage and get out of there.”

“Might be difficult,” Roxy said, looking over at the man. Eggsy noticed that she didn’t release the dead-man switch, just in case. “He’s got a head injury.”

Removing his glasses and folding them carefully into his pocket, Eggsy eyed the holes in the walls above them. “Between the two of us, we can haul him up there,” he said at last. “Yours would be better—like I said, bit of fallen rubble in mine. Be easier to get him out your way.”

Roxy frowned at him. “I’m going to have enough trouble getting into the hole myself. How do you expect me to do it while dragging a body?”

“I don’t.” Eggsy flashed her a grin. “Look, we’ll carry him over there. I’ll boost you up, then push him up to you while you pull. Once you’ve got him clear, I’ll jump up, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“You make it sound so easy.” Roxy grinned reluctantly back. “All right, let’s try this.” She cocked her head. “Quickly.”

Eggsy didn’t need to ask about the qualifier. He, too, heard the odd echoes from outside the steel door, indicating that they were going to have company very shortly. Not that it was unexpected, but they hadn’t planned on having to carry the hostage. “Right, let’s go.”

He got up and crossed over to where the man lay, his breathing shallow, still bleeding from the temple. Given more time, Eggsy would have taken a closer look at him, but as it was, he felt the wound gingerly. “Not too severe. Shouldn’t hurt him to be—”

“What?” Roxy asked, looking up when Eggsy stopped short. “What is it?”

Eggsy stared at the man’s face. He hadn’t really had a chance to look at it while he was cutting the man free, but now that he was, he could see the shape of the jaw, the set of the nose, the curve of the mouth. He knew them all, would know them in any country, any situation, but he hadn’t expected to see them. He  _couldn’t_ be seeing them. There was no way.

“We have to get him out of here,” he said, more sharply than he meant to. “ _Now.”_

“What’s wrong?” Merlin’s voice sounded concerned and bewildered—as well it should, because without his glasses on, what Eggsy was seeing didn’t get transmitted back to base.

Eggsy touched the man’s cheek briefly with trembling fingers before his training took hold and he could be professional and efficient again. “Roxy, come on, we’ve got to hurry.”

Between the two of them, they got the man into the hole, more or less as Eggsy had planned. The tunnel, such as it was, was barely large enough for Roxy to stand in; Eggsy had to crouch, but he shouldered the man as if he weighed nothing and set off at a stooped run, letting Roxy lead the way. Neither spoke until they emerged into the darkness behind some boulders, just as alarms began blaring behind them.

The jet waited for them some yards away. Scarcely were the two young agents up the steps when the doors were closing and the jet was taking off. Eggsy hurried into the main part of the plane, then lowered his burden onto a couch as gently as possible.

“We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” he said quietly. “Fast. We can’t lose him.”

Roxy came up behind him. “Who is he, anyway?”

Eggsy didn’t take his eyes off the man’s face. “It’s Harry.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“It really is him,” Merlin murmured, staring down at the form lying on the hospital bed.

He had come up to the room as soon as the two young agents had finished delivering their mission report, Eggsy at his side. The doctors had finished their exam, and the room was empty and silent except for the two of them, the beeping of the monitor, and the bed’s occupant.

The figure was pale and haggard, his hair longer and shaggier than was typical, and he had lost weight, but it was unmistakably Harry Hart in the flesh. The face was one Merlin knew well, had known since they both joined Kingsman. Back then they had been ordinary young men, little more than boys—Maximilian Clarke, a technological genius fresh out of university at the tender age of twenty, and Harry Hart, a restless spirit with a wide-eyed idealism coupled with the fires of inner vision that led him to want to protect the world. It was that fire that had given Harry the edge necessary to become Galahad, although both he and Maximilian had passed all of their tests, even the final one that had proved such a significant stumbling block to Eggsy. They’d been at something of a loss for what to do with Maximilian until the older man then serving as Merlin had taken him on, offering to teach him the ropes. It had been Harry who had teasingly nicknamed him “the Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and brought him a pair of souvenir mouse ears from a mission that happened to take him near the happiest place on Earth.

Merlin still had them sitting on a shelf in his office.

Eggsy quietly moved past Merlin and seated himself in a chair next to Harry’s side, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the older man’s face. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw ‘im at frst, either,” he said quietly. “Don’t seem possible. I  _saw_ ‘im shot.”

“We both did,” Merlin agreed. “But he must have survived, somehow. If he was even actually shot. I suppose it could have been an act…but he would have had to rig up the glasses to spray the blood somehow, and he would have had to do that without my knowledge. He’s good, but I don’t think even you’re that good.”

Eggsy didn’t so much as look up at the comment; Merlin wondered if he had even noticed the change in pronouns. “And ‘e would’ve ‘ad to—” He stopped and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, it was more carefully, paying attention to his H’s. “He would’ve had to know which side Valentine was aiming at. It must’ve just been a lucky shot.”

Merlin nodded slowly. “I was sure it was close to his eye.”

Leaning forward, Eggsy reached over and brushed Harry’s hair back from his temple. “Look—it was.”

Merlin leaned forward, but he didn’t fail to mark the way Eggsy had pushed back Harry’s hair—combing his fingers into it and gently teasing it back. His attention was riveted, however, by the small, neat scar, no more than a finger’s breadth away from Harry’s left eye. “Good God. If Valentine had been able to look properly, Harry would have lost the eye, at the very least.”

Eggsy touched the scar lightly, then carefully turned Harry’s head to one side and pushed up the hair on the back. Merlin was impressed to see that the young man had unerringly located the exit wound. He bit his lip, studying it, then looked up at Merlin. “A .380—right?”

Merlin had to physically stop himself from praising Eggsy as he would a favorite pupil. He reminded himself firmly that this was not a training exercise, nor an academic, clinical observation. This was his friend, a man both he and Eggsy cared about a great deal. Eggsy had not just passed a test Merlin had set for him. “I would say so. Small entrance and exit wounds, but not precisely the same size. And, of course, that likely contributes to his survival. The path the bullet took would have missed most of the essential functions.”

“Didn’t bounce around too much.” Eggsy eased Harry’s head back onto the pillow, then drew his hand back slowly, as if reluctant to lose the contact.

“I wonder who had him before the Russians did,” Merlin mused. “That wound healed so nicely—he must’ve had wonderful care. The Russians wouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah, they would have,” Eggsy said, looking up at Merlin again.

Merlin was a little taken aback. “What?”

“Well, they wanted his memories intact, didn’t they? They were asking him about ‘them,’ whoever ‘they’ are. They took him because they wanted information, and if his brain didn’t heal right, they wouldn’t get their answers. So they’d have had to take good care of him, to make sure he could tell them what they wanted to know.” Eggsy shrugged one shoulder. “Makes sense he’d have healed well.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Merlin said slowly, blinking. “But—how did you think of that?”

“Oh…” Eggsy flushed slightly. “Line from a movie.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“‘The count and the prince always insist on everyone being healthy before they’re broken,’” Eggsy said, altering his voice as though imitating someone else. When Merlin quirked an eyebrow at him, he elaborated, “ _The Princess Bride…_ you’ve never seen it?”

“No, I have.” Merlin vividly recalled a night, more than twenty years previously, curled up on one end of a sofa with a bowl of popcorn in the middle and making fun of his best friend for being more interested in the sappy romance than the dramatic action sequences. “It just surprises me that you have.”

Eggsy looked down at Harry’s face. “I’m just full of surprises.”

“That you are.” Merlin looked down at Harry, too. “I suppose that’s a good explanation for why they would have tended to him so carefully.”

“What I’m wondering—how did they get him in the first place?” Eggsy asked.

“They must have scooped him up from the front of the church,” Merlin said. “With everything that was going on at the time, I couldn’t keep monitoring his body, and we didn’t have the resources to send anybody after him. I’m afraid I made the assumption that he’d been found by the local authorities.”

A frown puckered Eggsy’s forehead. “Wouldn’t they have contacted…somebody?”

“Harry wouldn’t have had any form of identification on him,” Merlin said. “You know that as well as I do. He would have been placed in the county morgue, then eventually buried in a potter’s field when unclaimed. Even if they had known who he was—what would it have mattered? He had no family, no next of kin. Kingsman was his life. But we had no legal ties to him. I doubt we would have been able to claim his body if we had tried.”

“’S not Kingsman policy anyway, is it?” Eggsy asked softly.

Merlin sighed. “No. It isn’t.”

He watched Eggsy visibly swallow down the protest on the tip of his tongue. After six months of working with him—not to mention the eight months of training—Merlin had learned a lot about the young man and how he thought, how he acted. There were a lot of policies he disagreed with, and had done since the beginning, but he had learned to pick his battles. Secrecy was one of the hallmarks of Kingsman, and there was nothing less secret than turning up to claim the body of an operative from a morgue. Especially in a situation like the one in Kentucky, where there was an entire church full of dead bodies and there would have been questions about the lone stranger to begin with.

Eggsy’s fingertips traced lightly over Harry’s wrists. Merlin noticed the raw marks and murmured incredulously, “He was pulling at the ropes while he was tied to the chair…”

“These are old,” Eggsy said with a shake of his head. “And they don’t match. He was belted to the chair with solid straps, looked like leather. These marks are from ratchet ties—nylon straps, you know, the kind you use to tie down furniture on a trolley. Tougher ‘n rope, harder to break, and you can get ‘em tighter with a cinch.”

“Are you certain?” Merlin asked, skeptical.

Eggsy was silent for a moment, still idly tracing the marks. “You know technology, yeah? If I brought you something you’d never seen before, you could tell ‘ow it worked, based on what’s in it. You’ve spent a lot of time with it. You’re the expert. You’d want me to trust you, right?”

“Right,” Merlin said uncertainly.

“I know bruising,” Eggsy said simply. He looked up, and Merlin actually had to take a half-step back from the force of the pain in his eyes. “I can look at a scar, a bruise, tell you what made it, almost down to the brand name. I didn’t set out to be expert in it, but I am. Trust me. He was tied down with ratchet ties, probably to the bed while he was healing.”

Merlin stared at Eggsy for a moment as his words sank in. Quietly, he said, “Ordinarily, Eggsy, when people come into Kingsman with specific skills and knowledge, it pleases me. It’s important for an agent to know a wide variety of things. But…” He hesitated, then said, “I’m proud of what you’ve done. Harry will be, too. But I think both of us regret that it was necessary.”

Eggsy was highly intelligent; he knew exactly what Merlin was talking about. A faint flush came over his cheeks, and he looked back down at Harry. “Weren’t your fault,” he mumbled.

“Nor was it yours.” Merlin resisted the urge to ask if the young man had ever been bound with the ties he mentioned. Of course he had. The alternative was that he had seen those marks on his mother’s person, and Merlin knew well enough that Eggsy would have died rather than allow that.

“You sure about that?”

The words were so soft that Merlin almost didn’t hear them. In fact, he wondered if he had been meant to hear them, or if Eggsy was even aware that he had spoken aloud. There were a lot of layers to him, and the outer shell of confidence bordering on cockiness that he projected around bullies and marks was thinner than onion skin, the easiest to sweep away. Much thicker and tougher was the stalwart young man who would die for his friends, not because of bravado but because he was too loyal to let them suffer. Few ever saw the raw, vulnerable core, the scared little boy who could never quite forgive himself for not being able to prevent everything.

Merlin knew that boy well, far better than he ever wanted to. Eggsy had seemed fine and perfectly put-together, burning with a fierce determination, when he had come to reveal Valentine’s plan, and he’d carried through their mission with the same confidence and determination, but once they’d made it back to headquarters and he’d gone to clean up, Merlin had walked into the room to find him sitting in the corner with his arms folded on his knees, his face buried in them, sobbing as if his heart was broken. Emotions were not Merlin’s bailiwick, not remotely, but this was one thing he’d understood, because he missed Harry, too.

“I’m positive,” he said now, his voice quiet but carrying absolute conviction. “I’ve seen you in action, lad, and I’ve seen you with Michelle and Daisy. What happened to you over the years is none of your doing. And I look forward to seeing Harry’s face when you tell him how you took care of Dean in the end.”

Eggsy flushed again. “Should’ve done that sooner.”

“You did what you could with what you had.” Merlin laid a hand on Eggsy’s shoulder briefly. “Now then, speaking of your mother and your sister, you’d best get cleaned up and head home. We’ve got your report—there’s not much else you can do here tonight.”

“I—I’d like to stay,” Eggsy said hesitantly, letting his fingers brush over the back of Harry’s hand with the lightest of touches. “Just until he wakes up and all.”

The faintest flicker of suspicion sparked in the back of Merlin’s brain. Initially, he’d put Eggsy’s return to headquarters down to his deep sense of loyalty and marked his breakdown up as another failure to protect someone, but over the last few months he’d started to question that. Ideas were beginning to coalesce. He had assumed Eggsy thought of Harry as nothing more than a mentor, perhaps a very close friend, and that was why he had taken his death so hard. Now he wondered if there wasn’t something more to that, something deeper.

When he spoke, however, it was with no hint of what he suspected. “That won’t be for a day or two yet. You need at least one hot shower and one good night’s sleep before you start sitting the vigil.”

“But if he does…”

“I’ll call you right away,” Merlin promised. “I’ll stay here until you get back.”

Eggsy still hesitated. “You promise?”

“I do.” Merlin smiled gently. “Now go, before Arthur comes in and forces you to undergo a battery of medical tests.”

Eggsy winced, getting to his feet. Merlin didn’t blame him. The new Arthur was a decided improvement on the last—kind, thoughtful, warm-hearted, and a great deal more approachable, not to mention far less snooty and obsessed with aristocracy—but she was also a mother and, as such, inclined to be overly protective of her agents. She would undoubtedly be in soon to check on Harry, and if she saw Eggsy, fresh from a fight and still smudged with dirt and grime and a bit of blood—most of it not his—she would go into mother hen mode, or more accurately mother bear mode. The young man was right to want to avoid it.

“Thank you,” Eggsy said quietly. He looked down at Harry again and swallowed. “He will be all right…won’t he?”

“Of course he will. Our Harry’s tough,” Merlin said stoutly. He patted Eggsy on the back. “Go on, lad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Merlin.” Eggsy nodded, then touched Harry’s cheek briefly. “See you soon,” he whispered, and then he was gone, closing the door behind him with a faint click.

Sighing, Merlin sat down, propping one foot against his knee, and prepared himself for what was likely to be a long night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major thanks to Sarah for the loan of her Arthur (who is based on Judi Dench's portrayal of M in the more recent James Bond films)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this chapter done for a while and I thought I had posted it...apparently not. I'm so sorry.

The world seemed wrapped in cotton wool, muffled and fuzzy around the edges. Harry wasn’t sure where he was or what had happened to him. There was something soft beneath him, something cool over him, something in his arm and something electronic beeping and humming nearby. That in and of itself was enough to tell his brain, with sufficient prompting, that he was either in a hospital or a laboratory.

He forced his eyes open. The room was dimly lit and took a moment to come into focus. When it did, however, his gaze lit on a chair next to where he lay. A figure sat in the chair, its hands clasped over its chest, which was rising and falling steadily as the figure breathed, its eyes closed and its head lolled to one side.

_Eggsy,_ Harry thought.

Unable to keep his eyes open a moment longer, he let them close and slipped back into the warm embrace of oblivion.

When he woke again, the lights were brighter, though still subdued. Harry lay blinking at the ceiling for a moment, trying to gather his scattered wits and remember what had happened to him.

“So you’re back with us,” a voice said from his right.

Harry recognized the voice. He turned his head and saw Merlin sitting in the chair he had seen Eggsy in earlier—or had that been a dream? The man had one leg crossed over the other knee, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair, his fingers steepled, but his eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses were worried.

“Merlin,” Harry said, his voice a mere croak. “Where the fuck am I?”

Merlin chuckled softly. “That’s our Harry. You’re safe.”

“Safe,” Harry echoed. The word was meaningless and didn’t answer his question in the slightest, but he was willing to let that slide for now. “How long?”

“Have you been safe? They brought you in a week ago. Actually, the doctors were a bit surprised it’s taken you this long to wake up, but I suppose you were either worse hurt than they thought or simply tired from what you went through at the hand of the Arbiters.”

“The Arbiters. Fuck,” Harry muttered, letting his head fall back on the pillow. “Thought they were gone…”

He feebly tried to locate the mechanism on the bed. Merlin leaned forward and pressed a button; a moment later, Harry was sitting up. “So did we all. Apparently we were mistaken.”

Harry squinched up his eyes for a moment, clearing them in lieu of rubbing them, since his arms still felt too heavy to move properly. “Valentine?”

“Dead.”

“His plan?”

“Foiled. Quite brilliantly, I might add.”

Harry couldn’t help the faint smile that crossed his lips. He didn’t doubt for a minute that it had been Merlin who had foiled Valentine, and the man certainly didn’t have any false humility. “And then you went looking for me, did you?”

Merlin’s face instantly became serious, almost sad. “Harry, we saw Valentine shoot you through the damned eye, or so we thought. The next twenty-four hours were rather busy, and when they were over, there had been no word from you. We assumed you were dead. It was a coincidence we found you at all.”

Harry forced his thoughts to arrange themselves in an orderly fashion. “He didn’t, did he?” he asked at last.

“You  _are_ out of it,” Merlin murmured, so quietly Harry wondered if he had been meant to hear it. “No, he missed the eye. Probably to do with the fact that he looked away as he pulled the trigger. But he came damned close.”

That was the second time Merlin had sworn in as many minutes, and since Merlin, unlike Harry, rarely used profanity, it was a sign of how strong his emotions were. Harry took a deep breath. The rush of oxygen went a long way towards clearing his head. Memories of what he had gone through since then trickled through his mind.

“I thought he had,” he said softly.

“I noticed.”

“No, when—” Harry closed his eyes for a moment again. “When I first woke up. I opened my eyes and I didn’t see anything. I thought he’d shot my eye out.”

“It was probably dark,” Merlin began, but he looked a little distressed.

Harry shook his head, then stopped because the movement made him feel a little dizzy. “No. I heard them talking…it was a day or two before I processed that they were speaking Russian. I was blind. Temporarily.” He managed a small half-smile. “Obviously.”

Merlin closed his eyes briefly. “The bullet must have—you were extremely lucky, you know that?”

“I do. Although it’s hard to remember that when you’re strapped to a hospital bed.” Harry sighed. “But they took…surprisingly good care of me. I do recall that. I knew I wasn’t here, but somehow, I knew they wouldn’t harm me—not until they took me out of the infirmary, a day or two before they interrogated with me. Perhaps less. I don’t know. Hard to keep track of time in a windowless stone chamber.”

“They wanted information you had,” Merlin said in a careful sort of voice, as though he was trying out something somebody else had said. “It stands to reason they would have treated you carefully.”

Harry nodded, slowly. “They needed my memory intact.”

Merlin laced his fingers together, watching Harry intently. The silence stretched out like an elastic. Harry felt like Merlin was waiting for something from him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what it was. There was a time he would have known exactly what to say, when conversation would have flowed easily and lightly and with a great deal of banter. He decided to blame it on the fucking head injury.

Finally, Merlin spoke. “I heard a good portion of that interrogation. Who did they want information on?”

Harry blinked. “Kingsman, of course. Who the fuck else would they ask me about?”

“Ah, of course. Had they asked you about us before? Eggsy seemed to think—”

“Eggsy?” Harry half-sat up with shock, but a sudden surge of pain made his vision go white for a moment and he fell back against the bed.

“Harry, for God’s sake,” Merlin began, leaning forward.

Harry waved his friend back to his seat, blinking furiously to clear his head. “Eggsy knows what’s going on?”

Merlin looked surprised. “Of course he does.”

Harry hesitated. He remembered his brief moment of consciousness, the one he wasn’t sure he’d actually had, where he’d seen Eggsy asleep in the chair Merlin now occupied. But even further back…he remembered the feeling of unreality, coupled with a flash of terror, at the cheeky, confident smile flashed at him by the young man who had scarcely taken a proper look at him before slicing through the bonds on his wrists. Eggsy had been in that damned cell. He’d rescued Harry, and when Harry had managed to get himself free and turned around and seen the man who had been interrogating him rise to his feet and aim at the back of Eggsy’s head, Harry hadn’t thought, he’d just acted, jumping to his feet and screaming a warning as he got between the boy and the killer.

“He was there,” he said at last.

“He was there,” Merlin agreed.

“ _Why_ was he there?” Harry asked.

Merlin shrugged, as if the answer should be obvious, but the eyes as they regarded Harry were sharp and keen. “Because Arthur felt he and Roxy were the best agents for the mission.”

Harry stared at Merlin in shock.  _The best agents for the mission._ That meant that, despite everything—despite the fucking dog—Eggsy had been accepted as a Kingsman after all. Arthur had actually pulled his head out of his arse and agreed that the boy who’d grown up in a run-down flat on the wrong side of London was a man worthy of knighthood. And Eggsy had proven himself well enough to be sent on a mission without senior agents on-site.

“Why didn’t Arthur send a more senior agent?” he asked, just to be sure. “Bedivere? Dinadan? Sagramore? Percival?”

“All four of the agents you just named were on an assignment in Argentina at the time,” Merlin replied. “Not that she would have sent them anyway. Roxy and Eggsy together make a…formidable team. They’ve proven from the beginning that they don’t need anyone else to successfully run a mission.”

Harry started to smile, and then one of Merlin’s words filtered into his brain. “ _She?_ A slip of the tongue there…”

“No more than yours was.” Merlin slipped the verbal knife neatly between Harry’s ribs. “You recall Guinevere Marron?”

“Yes, of course, her code name is Kay.” Harry and Guinevere, a deceptively sweet older woman who always insisted he call her Jenny, had run more than a few missions together. She had in fact been the one to recommend him to Kingsman in the first place, although he had never told Merlin that, even once the period of secrecy had—theoretically—passed.

Merlin shook his head. “Not anymore. She became Arthur the same day Eggsy was knighted.”

“What the fuck?” Harry frowned. “What happened to—to Chester?” He had to dredge deep into the recesses of his memory in order to pull up the man’s name.

“He’s dead,” Merlin said, almost casually, but there was an undercurrent of tightness to his voice.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. “Start at the beginning.”  
Merlin hesitated for the briefest of moments. “I won’t give you all the details—it’s Eggsy’s story more than anything, and I feel quite sure that he’ll want to tell you himself. But I can at least answer some of your questions.”

“What was Valentine’s plan?” Harry asked immediately. He still remembered the man’s last words to him:  _This ain’t that kinda movie._ Though occasionally indiscreet, Valentine was far from unintelligent.

“You recall those SIM cards of his?” Merlin answered, raising an eyebrow. “The ones he offered to everyone in the world, completely free of charge?”

Harry did. He vividly recalled Valentine’s flamboyant, confident press conference, his attitude at the small private “party” he had held for Harry. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he also recalled the look in Eggsy’s eyes—mingled awe at the genius and largess of the billionaire and smug pride at being able to tell two senior Kingsman agents something they didn’t already know ten times more about than he did. Those soft, innocent green eyes…

“Yes, of course,” he said in the most neutral tone of voice he could manage. “Valentine explained them to me, remember? He activated the signal, everyone within a certain radius would be seized with a violent rage, coupled with a lack of inhibitions.”

“And since nearly everyone in the world had one…you can imagine the consequences.” Merlin studied Harry seriously, almost sadly. “The church was a short-range, controlled test of the device. You simply had the misfortune to be in the middle of it.”

“Fuck,” Harry hissed between his teeth. He remembered that rage well, the feeling that he was not himself, that another had control of his body, his mind. As obnoxious, bigoted, and quite frankly dangerous in their own way as the people in that “congregation” had been, they hadn’t been a direct threat to him at the time, and he should have been willing to let them live. His straight-faced sarcastic comment about being all of the things the so-called preacher had warned about (when in reality he was only one, perhaps two if one squinted, of those problems) had done a great deal in the way of relieving his feelings, and he had actually intended to walk away. He had turned back, however, and attacked, and then come back to himself with the horrifying realization of what he had done and no idea why. He knew now, of course, but he wasn’t sure he liked the answer, even if it did absolve him of blame.

A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him. “Are you certain it was coincidence, then?”

“Perhaps ninety-eight percent certain. We’ve tossed around a few theories since then, of why he chose that particular church, and actually, Eggsy was the one who ventured what I think is the most likely solution.”

“Which is…?”

“Hatred,” Merlin said simply. “Those people were already halfway to where Valentine wanted them anyway, so they would have been simple to push over the edge. And frankly, very few people would have missed any of them. There would be no suspicion in law enforcement circles—simply a falling-out among a minor cult only one step away from physically attacking those they viewed as a plague on their country. Valentine’s card was more likely to work on them, and since the church was isolated, there would be little to no danger of them attacking anyone else.” He steepled his fingers again. “You were an outlier, an anomaly. He had no way of knowing how you would react. After all, he knew you as a gentleman. He didn’t know whether or not violence was something you would normally resort to, or if you were one of those men who couldn’t bear the thought of fisticuffs. And he didn’t know if you had his SIM card or not, or if the signal would work on you if you didn’t.”

“But it did,” Harry said softly. “And I slaughtered them.”

“Yes, I was watching,” Merlin said dryly. “Excellent use of the materials at hand, by the way. Although it was more terrifying than impressive at the time.”

“How the fuck do you think I felt?” Harry shook his head. “But…what was the  _point_ of it? I don’t mean the church itself, I mean the mind-control cards.”

Merlin didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, it was in a very careful voice. “As I understand it, Valentine’s theory was that the human race was a planetary virus, and that global warming was Mother Nature’s fever. When one has a virus, a fever, there are two outcomes—either the host kills the virus or the virus kills the host. Valentine believed, or pretended to believe, that the only way to save the planet was to kill the virus—that is, the human race. He had his chosen few, those he had selected to be part of his new world order, and they all had implants behind their ears that would protect them from the kill signal—but which could also be remotely detonated if Valentine felt they were no longer useful, or that they had said too much.”

“Like he did to Professor Arnold,” Harry said, realization dawning.

“Precisely.” Merlin sighed. “Naturally, they weren’t told that part.”

“Naturally.” Harry shifted marginally. “How did you get Valentine to tell you?”

“We didn’t,” Merlin admitted. “Chester—Arthur—was the one who told Eggsy, and Eggsy passed the information along to Roxy and myself.”

Harry frowned. “How the fuck did Arthur find out, then?” He was still having trouble wrapping his brain around the idea that the Arthur he had known was dead, and that Jenny was the new Arthur, so in characteristic fashion he had elected to ignore it for the time being.

Merlin rubbed his forehead, a tired look on his face that alarmed Harry. “Because Valentine had already got to him, Harry,” he said softly. “He was completely sold on this—this new world order. He had the implant in his head and he agreed that Valentine’s way was the only way. He was one of them.”

Harry’s blood ran cold. The thought that the man he had once admired and respected had allowed himself to be swayed by—what? Promises of wealth, of power? Whatever it was, it had robbed him of all reason. How could he not have known that, in becoming one of Valentine’s chosen few, he was betraying Kingsman and the agents he had sworn to lead and protect, condemning them to horribly violent death? Had he watched Harry’s fight, and seeming death, with the fascination of knowing that soon all his men would fall under that spell? What of the young men and women who had been diligently training and competing for a place in Kingsman? Did none of their lives mean anything to him?

He took a deep breath. “How did Eggsy get Arthur to tell him all of this? Doesn’t seem like something he’d do. After all, he was such a fucking snob about class distinctions—and after he wouldn’t shoot the dog—how did Eggsy even get back to him?”

Merlin didn’t answer for a moment. Harry, looking at him, was surprised to see the little tells that indicated Merlin was having a fierce debate with himself. At last, he spoke, but his voice, although quiet, trembled faintly with emotion. “Harry…Eggsy was watching the feed from your glasses.”

Harry’s breath caught in his throat. “He saw what I did?”

“Yes, but more importantly, he saw you get shot. He saw you  _die,_ or at least he thought he did. He came up to tell Arthur what had happened and arrived immediately after Arthur led the traditional toast.” Merlin leaned forward slightly. “Arthur said that, as you were rather fond of him, perhaps the rules could be bent—and poured Eggsy a glass of brandy, and one for himself, so they could toast you together. It was while he was pouring that Eggsy noticed the scar.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t—” Harry began, frowning, and then he stopped as his mind, sharpened and honed over years of service with Kingsman, clicked into gear. “Oh, my God. No. Don’t tell me—”

Merlin nodded. “After they had drunk the toast…Arthur held up one of the pens and revealed that he’d poisoned Eggsy’s glass. Then he proceeded to tell him Valentine’s plan, and offer him a chance to be a part of it. Naturally, Eggsy refused.”

Pain lanced through Harry’s skull as he struggled to sit upright, his heart racing. “The pen—did anyone get the pen? You can’t just leave it lying around, if it’s been primed, all it would take is—”

“Harry, for God’s sake, calm down.” Merlin pressed a gentle hand against Harry’s shoulder, trying to ease him back onto the bed.

“If that fucking pen falls into the wrong hands—” Harry fought against the pressure.

“It won’t,” Merlin assured him. “It’s already done its dirty work.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Harry practically shouted.

Merlin shook his head. “I told you Arthur put poison in one of the glasses of brandy. I also told you he was dead. Do the math, Harry.” He looked at Harry intently. “Eggsy switched the glasses.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“I told you, he noticed Arthur’s scar while he was pouring. And he was a bit suspicious of why a man with such rigid views about, well, everything would suddenly be willing to break rules for someone he never wanted to be a Kingsman in the first place—Eggsy’s not stupid, far from it. He asked Arthur about the portraits of the founders of Kingsman, then switched the glasses around quickly while his back was turned.” Merlin sat back again. “When Arthur engaged the poison, it killed  _him,_ not Eggsy. There’s no danger. He’s fine.”

Harry stared at Merlin for a moment, trying to remember how to breathe.  _There’s no danger. He’s fine._ Strange how important it was for him to hear those words. Eggsy was all right. He had outwitted a man with more than forty years of experience in espionage and deceit, had saved his own life, and had done it in a way that even Arthur hadn’t seen it coming. Relief flooded through him. Mingled with the relief was a surge of pride. His boy had done well.

“Did he live long enough to know he’d been foiled?” he managed to ask at last.

“He did,” Merlin said with the ghost of a smile. “I’ll let Eggsy give you the details. But after he died, Eggsy came and found us—Roxy and me. Roxy almost shot him before he told us what was going on and I was able to verify at least some of it.”

“And then you came up with a plan to stop Valentine,” Harry said with the same faint smile.

“No,” Merlin said, surprising Harry. “Well, it was a communal effort, but when it all went wrong, Eggsy was the one who figured out how to fix it.”

The smile that curled across Harry’s face at that was neither faint nor tentative. “That’s my boy,” he said softly, his voice full of pride. “That’s my boy. I don’t want details, but…basics, Merlin. Give me the basics.”

Merlin laughed quietly, lacing his fingers together. “Valentine had a secure facility where he had his control center for the chips, and also where he had invited those of his followers who didn’t have an otherwise secure place to ride out the destruction of the human race. Roxy went up by one of those contraptions we liberated from Reagan’s Star Wars program to take out one of Valentine’s satellites while Eggsy used Arthur’s invitation to infiltrate the lair. I stayed with the plane. Eggsy stunned the Scandinavian Prime Minister, borrowed his laptop, and got me into Valentine’s mainframe, but…Charlie caught him.”

“Charlie?” Harry frowned. “The little rat Arthur recommended as Lancelot?”

“He’s the one. We still don’t know if Arthur was already on board with Valentine’s scheme when he recruited Charlie, or which of them brought the other onto the project, but it doesn’t matter. He was there with his parents, he recognized Eggsy, he outed him. Eggsy electrocuted him with the signet ring—well done showing him all that equipment, by the way, it was a great time-saver—and made a break for it. Roxy’s missile did take out the satellite, which I thought would buy us an hour or two, but Valentine managed to get another one within a few minutes.” Merlin pulled a face. “Honestly, I was sure that was it. He got the control chips activated, fights started all over the world. Eggsy got cornered by most of Valentine’s guards…he probably could have fought them all off himself, but he remembered that I had Arthur’s implant and suggested I trigger the rest.”

“Brilliant,” Harry whispered approvingly.

“It certainly was,” Merlin agreed. “Unfortunately, it didn’t stop Valentine for long. He was still determined to end the rest of the world, even if all of his friends were dead. Eggsy went back to the control center…Gazelle, that woman of Valentine’s, you remember her?”

“The one with the swords for legs. Yes, I recall.”

“She fought him.” Merlin paused, obviously debating with himself for a moment, then continued, “He won, then grabbed one of her legs and threw it at Valentine, impaled him through the back. Saved the world.”

Harry wanted to press for details, but restrained himself. As Merlin had said, Eggsy would likely want to tell him the details himself. If he had saved the world, he would undoubtedly be proud of himself, and justifiably so.

“That’s my boy,” he said again.

Merlin smiled warmly. “I’ve told him time and again that you’d be proud of him. I’ll be glad to see his face when he sees I’m right.”

“He doubts it?” Harry’s eyebrows shot upwards in surprise.

“You may recall that the last time you saw him, you were incredibly disappointed in him,” Merlin said quietly, his face growing serious again. “You left him in no doubt that he had let you down terribly, that he had wasted the chance you gave him. Of course he doubts that you’d ever be proud of anything he accomplished after that.”

A wave of guilt washed over Harry. “Oh, God,” he murmured. “Fuck. I never meant…”

“I know,” Merlin said. “You didn’t know that when you walked out the door, you were likely to never see him again. You thought you’d have a chance to fix it. But…” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “I don’t think you realize just how fragile Eggsy can be. I didn’t, either, not until we got back to headquarters and he tried to find a quiet place to fall apart. He felt a certain amount of guilt about not being able to save everyone—even those Valentine had chosen, but especially those who died when Valentine activated his cards—but he was convinced that your death was actually his fault. That if he hadn’t failed you, if he had just shot the dog like Arthur told him to, he could somehow have stopped you from getting shot. But what completely destroyed him was knowing that he failed you.”

“He didn’t fail me,” Harry said hoarsely. “He never failed me. I was angry, but I was never angry at him. I would have fixed it, I would have—oh, God.” He closed his eyes, fighting back tears. “I’ve never not had reason to be proud of him. Has he really spent the last few weeks believing otherwise?”

“The last few months, actually,” Merlin said. “Valentine died over six months ago.”

Harry tried to digest this information. For six months—for  _more_ than six months—everyone who had known him had believed him to be dead. And Eggsy had spent that entire time thinking that Harry had died believing he was a failure. That Merlin was just trying to buck him up by saying that Harry would have been proud.

“I’ve been a bloody fool,” he muttered.

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score,” Merlin said.

Despite everything, Harry managed to shoot his best friend a withering look. “You weren’t supposed to agree with me.”

Merlin spread out his hands, palms up. “What do you want me to do, Harry? Lie to you? Tell you that you were right to manipulate Eggsy’s emotions, make him think he’d ruined everything so he would work twice as hard to fix it? You know better than that. You lashed out in anger and in doing so, you hurt Eggsy, probably more deeply than you could ever have imagined. He puts up a good front. It’s fooled a lot of people, and I dare say it fooled you, even though you thought he was an open book to you. But he’s really quite insecure about a lot of things.”

Harry felt the twist of guilt in his stomach again. “I really fucked up.”

“You really did,” Merlin agreed. “But now you  _do_ have a chance to fix it.”

“So get my head out of my arse, is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, it’s a good place to start.”

Harry was trying to formulate an appropriate reply to that when he heard a quiet, genteel knock at the door, three deferential taps, loud enough to be heard but discreet enough to not interrupt any discussion going on behind the door. He surmised it was a nurse or an orderly.

Merlin raised his head. “Come in,” he called, keeping his voice as low as possible.

The door opened a crack, just enough to admit the figure standing outside, and then closed with a quiet  _click._ Harry’s heart beat twice, very rapidly, and then stopped for a moment as he took in the person who had just entered.

It was Eggsy.

Gone was the outfit Harry vividly recalled from their last encounter, the cheap cotton jogging jacket, the worn jeans, the oversized cap. Instead, Eggsy, who had obviously just come in from the field, wore a suit that anyone who knew suits would have known came from Kingsman. In fact, Harry was prepared to swear that it was the very suit he himself had commissioned for Eggsy, after he had made it to the final round of training, the day Valentine had been fit for his own morning suit; it was a dark pinstripe, the colors perfect to complement Eggsy’s complexion, tailored to flatter his slender but well-muscled frame. The tie, surprisingly, was not striped but solid, a rich and deep red, and it was tied in a Balthus knot, which was an uncommon choice and somewhat difficult to tie. Eggsy, or whomever had tied his tie, had done it perfectly. The black standard-issue Kingsman glasses perched on his nose as though they had always belonged there, and his hair was neatly combed, parted on the side. He was as fresh as if he was at the start of a mission, and the only tell that he was instead at the end was the cut on his cheek, seeping blood redder than the tie.

It was the first time Harry had seen Eggsy in a bespoke suit, and it took his breath away.

He’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“Everything all right?” Merlin asked, his voice gentle.

Eggsy nodded, although he looked, to Harry’s eye, a bit tired. “No real problems. I’ve brought you my report.”

For the first time, Harry noticed the file in the young man’s hand. Merlin nodded. “You should get that cut seen to.”

“I’m all right. ‘S not too deep.”

“It is, however, still bleeding.”

Eggsy raised his right hand towards the left side of his chest. For a moment, Harry thought he was going to reach for the neatly folded satin square tucked in the breast pocket, but instead, he slipped his free hand into the jacket and fished out a spotlessly clean linen handkerchief, which he pressed to the cut on his cheek. He turned his head, lips parting as if to ask a question, but stopped when his gaze met Harry’s. The young man’s eyes widened in surprise, and his entire face lit up as his mouth curved into a broad smile.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft but filled with a kind of excited joy. “You’re awake.”

The sarcastic  _master of the obvious_ comment Harry intended to make got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth, and what came out was, “You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?” Eggsy tossed the question off as if it was an average, everyday comment. Harry couldn’t explain, even to himself, why his heart rate suddenly accelerated. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to admit it.

Merlin got to his feet and held out his hand. “Here. I’ll go take a look at your report. You sit down…you look about done in.”

Eggsy handed the file to Merlin. Harry noted with surprise and pleasure that Eggsy even did that properly, left hand to left hand, leaving the right free for a handshake if necessary, like a true gentlemen—which it was obvious he had become. “I hope I haven’t left anything out.”

“You never have before. But if I have any questions, I’ll know where to find you.” Merlin glanced at Harry briefly. He was obviously trying not to smile, damn the bastard. “If he tires you out, let me know and I’ll send a nurse in with the heavy-duty sedatives.”

“To whom were you directing that comment?” Harry said with as much acidity as he could manage.

Merlin smirked for a moment before turning his full attention to Eggsy, putting a hand on the young man’s shoulder briefly. “Well done, lad,” he said quietly.

Eggsy nodded, flushing slightly. “Thanks, Merlin.”

With one final nod in Harry’s direction, Merlin slipped out the door, letting it close quietly behind him.

Harry assumed that Eggsy would sit down as soon as they were alone, but he didn’t; he didn’t even move. Instead, he remained where he was standing, at the foot of Harry’s bed, one hand resting lightly on the foot of it. His smile had faded into something a little more wary, a little more uncertain, as his eyes scanned Harry’s face. The silence stretched between them like an elastic.

Finally, Eggsy broke the silence, fumbling a little over his words. “Do you mind if I—?” He gestured vaguely at the chair Merlin had vacated.

Suddenly, Harry remembered their conversation in his office, when he had first given Eggsy instruction on how to be a gentleman.  _First of all, you should have asked before you sat down._ Warmth spread through his chest as he realized that Eggsy had listened to him, that he had  _remembered._ Or maybe someone else had instructed him again in the past six months. Somehow, though, he suspected it was the former. At least, he hoped it was.

“Sit, Eggsy, please,” he said, nodding to the chair.

Eggsy sat down carefully, a little stiffly. At first, Harry worried that he was injured in places he couldn’t see, but then the young man gave a soft sigh and sank back into the chair, seeming to deflate as he did so. He balled the handkerchief in his hand, removing the glasses with the other and flicking them closed. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “Bit tired. I pushed it some to get back tonight.”

“Where were you?” Harry asked, repressing the natural inclination to scold the young man for not waiting out the night.

“Belarus. Routine recon.”

“And the cut?”

Eggsy shrugged one shoulder. “Like I said, nothing serious. Had a bit of a scrap with a sentinel on my way out, that’s all.”

Harry couldn’t explain his nagging concern, but he pushed. “You’re certain it’s not too bad?”

Something flickered briefly through Eggsy’s eyes. “Trust me, Harry. I’ve had worse.”

Guilt twisted in Harry’s stomach again. He didn’t answer, merely let his eyes roam over Eggsy. The young man certainly looked fit, even more than he had at the conclusion of his training, the last time Harry had seen him. However, he also looked, as Merlin had said, absolutely done in. Harry couldn’t help but wonder. Most of the time, Kingsman agents had twenty-four hours to report back to headquarters. Commercial flights took three hours from Belarus to England, Kingsman jets somewhat less. Eggsy could have— _should_ have—spent the night at the outpost there and returned in the morning, report in hand. Instead, he had rushed back despite his obvious exhaustion, without even stopping to have a cut, however minor, tended.

“Why did you hurry back?” he asked.

Eggsy bit his lower lip. “Tell the truth, I was hoping to be here when you woke up.”

Harry felt a weight in his chest lift slightly, even as he answered calmly. “I think you were.”

“What?” Eggsy looked startled. “No, I’ve been in Belarus for the last eighteen hours…”

“I woke briefly, I think,” Harry said slowly. “Or perhaps I only thought I did. But I opened my eyes and I thought—I thought you were sitting there.” He gestured to the chair. “You were asleep.”

Eggsy didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, he said quietly, “When we first brought you in…after I made my report…Merlin made me go home, get cleaned up and get a bit of rest before I could come back. But as soon as I was allowed back in…I was waiting. I wanted to be here when you woke up. I wanted—” His voice broke momentarily. “I wanted to be sure you would actually wake up.”

“Eggsy.” Harry wanted to reach over and take Eggsy’s hand, but he had to settle for stretching his fingers in the young man’s direction. Anything more extreme than that still hurt too much.

“Don’t tell me that of course you woke up,” Eggsy said, shaking his head quickly. “Don’t say it. Because it wasn’t sure. We’ve spent the last week wondering if there was something they gave you in that fucking dungeon that didn’t show up on any scans but was killing you. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Even watching…all the doctors and nurses, they told me not to bother, that you’d wake up on your own and me being here wouldn’t make any difference. But I had to  _know._ I didn’t want to leave, even for a minute, because I was afraid something would go wrong and I wouldn’t be here. Only reason I went on this fucking mission at all was Merlin promised to stay with you, let me know right away if something happened.”

“Why did you get sent on the mission in the first place?” Harry asked. Arthur—the new Arthur, Jenny—was a bit sentimental, and she was also sensible. Somehow, he couldn’t picture her sending Eggsy when his mind was so obviously elsewhere if there was literally anyone else she could have sent.

Eggsy ran a hand through his hair absently. Harry found it slightly distracting, but tried to focus on Eggsy’s words. “They’re all kids, barely out of their teens. I’m the only Kingsman the right age who also speaks Russian.”

“You speak Russian?” Harry asked, surprised. That hadn’t been in Eggsy’s files, as far as he remembered.

“Little bit,” Eggsy replied with a nod.

“How did you learn?”

Was it his imagination, or did Eggsy suddenly look a little uncomfortable? “Somebody I used to go with. Only lasted a few months, but…”

“But she taught you the rudiments of the language,” Harry completed, knowing perfectly well what Eggsy meant by  _used to go with._

Eggsy mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “wasn’t a she.” Before Harry could question him, however, he spoke in a more normal tone of voice. “How are you feeling, then, Harry?”

_A lot better, now that I’ve seen for myself you’re all right,_ Harry thought. How would Eggsy react if he said that out loud? “I’ve got one hell of a headache and it hurts to move too much, but other than that, I’m just fine, thank you.”

Eggsy half-rose from his seat. “I’ll go get a nurse and—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Eggsy. Sit down.” Harry was secretly afraid that if a nurse came in with a painkiller, it would knock him out and he would lose the opportunity to talk to his protege. “I’m quite all right.”

Eggsy eyed him suspiciously, but he sank back down into his seat. It crossed Harry’s mind that, perhaps, Eggsy had come to the same conclusion about the painkillers. “All right, then, but if you need one—”

“I am capable of alerting the nurses myself.” Harry flicked a finger towards the call button that lay on top of his leg, eerily reminiscent of the last time he had been in a Kingsman hospital room, after Professor Arnold’s head had exploded in his hands. “I promise.”

“All right,” Eggsy said again. He sat back against the chair, fiddling almost unconsciously with the signet ring on his right hand.

Harry studied him for a moment. “Merlin told me you saved the world.”

“We did,” Eggsy said with a small smile.

“No, not the three of you,” Harry corrected him. “ _You,_ Gary Unwin, bear the honor of having saved the world, singlehandedly.”

“I didn’t do it on my own,” Eggsy protested, his face flushing. “Couldn’t ‘ave done it if Merlin ‘adn’t activated them security chips. And Roxy shot down the satellite—even if Valentine got it back up quick, like, it gave us a bit o’ breavin’ room.”

It wasn’t until Harry heard Eggsy’s working-class accent come to the forefront that he realized the young man had almost eradicated it from ordinary speech. He decided not to call attention to it. “But you were the one who actually defeated both Gazelle and Valentine. Merlin told me you fought them both, but he skimped a bit on the details. Perhaps you could fill me in?”

Eggsy shrugged a little. “Not much to tell. After Merlin activated the security chips, Valentine got on the loudspeaker…demanded to know if we really thought he’d been stupid enough to put the implant in his own head. We hadn’t, of course, but I thought…you know, at least it meant we stood a chance of surviving. Anyway, he said he was still going to go ahead with his plan, even though all his mates were dead.” He paused for a moment, obviously gathering his thoughts. “The trigger…it was a biometric scanner. There was no other choice. I had to go take his hand off the console.”

“So how did you do it?” Harry prompted.

“Started off shooting at the glass of the control room,” Eggsy said. His eyes took on a faraway look. “It distracted Valentine for a minute, anyway. He let go of the scanner. I was trying to keep him pinned down, but then Gazelle…she leaped out the window, shooting at me. I had to drop the gun I was using. Valentine got up and got his hand back on the scanner…kept yelling at her to just kill me.” He smiled slightly. “At one point he told her to quit playing with her food.”

Harry tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. Even knowing that Eggsy had survived the encounter didn’t make any aspect of his life-or-death struggle amusing to him, not right then. “How did you manage to stop her?”

Eggsy’s smile faded. “She—sort of leaped at me, feet first, so…I clicked my heels together and sprang at her, too. She cut my tie in half but missed everything of importance. I nicked her in the arm. Lucky thing, that was enough. She dropped dead in about ten seconds.” He bit his lip again. “Valentine was shouting for her, asking if I was dead or not. I only had one shot, so…I pulled off one of her fake legs, extended it to its full length so it was like a javelin, and threw it. Hit Valentine square in the back.”

“Well done,” Harry said softly. “Did he die instantly?”

“No…fell backwards out onto the floor, but he was still gasping his last when I got there. Asked if this was the part where I made a bad pun.”

“What did you tell him?”

Eggsy looked up and met Harry’s gaze squarely. “Like he told you. This ain’t that kind of movie.”

Harry couldn’t even summon up a smirk at the barbed retort. “Eggsy…I am sorry you had to witness that.”

“I didn’t  _have_ to,” Eggsy said with a pathetic attempt at a smile. “You told me to stay put, not to watch the feed from your glasses on your computer.”

“Yes, but—” Harry stopped. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that Eggsy  _had_ actually stayed put, that he had waited in Harry’s house, patiently, obediently, for Harry to return, only to witness what he assumed was Harry’s death. Fuck, he had  _really_ fucked it up.

Eggsy didn’t take his eyes off of Harry’s. “I’m glad I did, though. If I hadn’t…I’d have stayed where I was, wondering when you were coming back. Assuming I didn’t get caught up in Valentine’s fucking mind control.”

Harry’s stomach twisted again, so violently that he actually gasped at the sudden pain. Eggsy started, looking anxious, but Harry waved him back. “It’s nothing. I’m fine,” he muttered.

Eggsy sank back, looking dubious. Harry didn’t blame him. He’d never felt further from fine himself. Not at the thought of Eggsy getting killed in the riots caused by Valentine’s SIM cards—Eggsy was a damned good fighter, he’d have held his own at least as well as Harry had in the church. But the mind control had not been painless, not in the slightest, and when he’d realized what he had done afterward, it had been agonizing. He wouldn’t wish something like that on Eggsy. Not for the world.

“Were you hurt?” he asked, surprising himself with the question. Eggsy was alive and still in one piece, six months later. There was a time when that would have been all that counted, even with Harry. But it suddenly became very important to him to know whether or not the young man next to him had been injured.

“Not too bad,” Eggsy replied. “Banged my face up a bit, that’s all. Had a bruise for a day or two.” His eyes took on a slightly faraway look. “Most of the hurting was inside.”

For a moment, Harry panicked, thinking Eggsy was saying he’d had internal injuries—but then he realized what the young man meant, and frankly, that was even worse. He forced himself to lift his hand off the bed and reach for Eggsy’s, but pain made him grimace and let it fall. “I am sorry,” he said again.

Eggsy looked startled. He stared at Harry for a moment, then reached over and covered Harry’s hand with his own. His palm was soft and warm, his touch startlingly gentle, and Harry felt his heart rate accelerate.

“It’s not your fault, Harry,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault at all.”

Harry watched as Eggsy’s eyelashes—surprisingly long lashes—fluttered for a moment. An instant later, the young man’s chin dropped onto his chest, and his steady, even breathing told Harry that he had fallen asleep.

Slowly, carefully, Harry laced his fingers through Eggsy’s. Fighting against the pain, he drew the young man’s hand up to his lips and pressed a light, gentle kiss to the back of it.

“Thank you, my boy,” he whispered, knowing the young man couldn’t hear him.

He lowered the hand back to his stomach and lay back, watching Eggsy, a fond smile hovering about his lips. His intention was to look after the young man for a little while, but almost before he knew what he was about, he had fallen asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am working on the next chapter, and I will have it up within a month or so. I just also have a couple of other ongoing projects...and I work full-time, so other things keep taking precedence. But I know how this story is going to end, and I promise I will finish.


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